The Birds of Shakespeare 
re the infancy of mankind no tribe 
of living creatures has awakened 
more sympathy in the human heart than 
the Birds of the Air. Their pairing, their 
nesting, their sedulous care of their young, 
their arrival in spring and disappearance in 
autumn, the endless variety of their notes, 
and the manifold diversity of their habits 
and dispositions, often so suggestive of 
analogies with those of human nature, 
have arrested the attention of even the 
most unobservant men. This wide range 
of attraction, appealing so directly to the 
poetic instincts of humanity, has called 
forth hearty recognition in the literature 
of every age and of every tongue. In our 
own literature this recognition has been 
A I 
